By Sandy K. Johnson, Extension Master Gardener
The date was January 12, 1785. As the wind blew hard and cold, George Washington — no longer commander-in-chief and not yet president — rode to the far corners of his Mount Vernon estate in search of native trees to frame the bowling green he had long envisioned at the entrance to his mansion.[1]
Washington selected a number of young Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip poplar) that were subsequently transplanted in February and March by enslaved laborers. Many fell to an unseasonably wet spring and then summer drought. But today two of those tulip poplars tower over the bowling green on opposite sides, 120 feet and 145 feet tall. They are living witnesses to the 250 years of history that ensued after the Revolutionary War.
“It’s a way to think about trees as witnesses to this amazing history, not just to George and Martha Washington, but the enslaved people and big moments in early American history,” said Holly Gruntner, Mount Vernon landscape historian.
“It’s also amazing to think about what these trees weathered. … If trees could talk, right?” she said.
As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday, not many trees from the late 1700s survive in Alexandria and Arlington. Almost all succumbed by the thousands to farming, logging, industrial and residential development, and climate change. But there are a few here and there, bearing witness to the generations of people and events that over the last 250 years transformed a heavily forested corner of Virginia into an urban cityscape.
In the 1970s the Bicentennial Tree Project in Alexandria identified trees that had survived since the American Revolution. Only two still remain on public land. A Quercus phellos (willow oak) towers above the Holmes Run Trail to the north of Beatley Central Library; when last measured in 2024, it stood 116 feet high with a girth of 208 inches. A plaque at the base of the tree reads: “This tree is believed to have sprouted around 1707, before the official founding of Alexandria. It stood during key moments in American history, including the American Revolution, and remained a constant as the City transformed.”
The second bicentennial tree in Alexandria is a Liquidambar styraciflua (sweetgum) at the Alexandria National Cemetery, located at the bottom of the hill below the American flag. It is estimated to be 250 years old; it was 97 feet tall when measured in 2013.
Another ancient sweetgum looms above a cluster of private homes on West Oak Street in Alexandria. When last measured in 2023, it was 102 feet high with a trunk girth of 218 inches.
Photo © Sandy K. Johnson
Photo © Sandy K. Johnson
Arlington National Cemetery is another good location to find very old trees: Some of the cemetery’s oldest trees, at nearly 250 years old, pre-date the first burials. Its grounds boast 9,800 trees.
Urban forester Greg Huse said the biggest specimen is a white oak in Section 2 of the cemetery along Sheridan Drive. There are many notable gravesites in that section, including Civil War officers Gen. Philip H. Sheridan and Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny as well as Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant who came to America to fight in the Revolutionary War.
Other notable old tree specimens include a few dozen along the avenues or drives bordering Section 60 of the cemetery, where former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell is buried.
“We are diligent about keeping an eye on old big trees, which are guardians of living history,” Huse said. “As we ‘anthropomorphize’ the trees, they witnessed, saw all this history happen.”
Close by is the 12-acre Arlington Woods behind Arlington House, also known as the Lee Mansion, that graces the high point of Arlington National Cemetery. Rod Simmons, who was Alexandria’s natural resource manager for nearly 30 years, said the ravine and spring-fed stream valley is the last remaining parcel of an old-age forest that once covered more than 1,000 acres inherited by George Washington’s adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis.
Simmons said the ravine forest hosts oaks, hickories, tulip poplars, and beeches. A National Park Service (NPS) count of radial growth rings of several fallen trees in the Arlington Woods revealed ages upwards of 250 years.
One visitor to Arlington House was Washington’s war contemporary, Marquis de Lafayette. According to a NPS plaque commemorating his 1824 visit, Lafayette said to Mrs. Custis, “Cherish these forest trees around your mansion…recollect how much easier it is to cut a tree than to make one grow.”
Elsewhere in Arlington, Glencarlyn Park is recognized by the Old-Growth Forest Network, which describes Glencarlyn as “the second-oldest extant growth of natural forest remaining in Arlington.”
Vincent Verweij, urban forest manager for the Arlington County Department of Parks and Recreation, says the Glencarlyn forest shows no evidence of disturbance over the centuries. He said there is a theory that the trees were undisturbed because the area was a vacation destination with two natural springs located there.
“As you go farther into the forest, you start noticing the older trees,” Verweij said. “This is an old forest but that doesn’t mean every tree is 300-plus years old.” He cited oaks, hickories, and beeches.
Photo by U. S. Forest Service circa 1932
Photo © Sandy K. Johnson
Back at Mount Vernon, there is another tulip poplar that dates to 1766 along the path that leads to Washington’s tomb. It is a striking tree because its roots have sprouted “knees.” It is 115 feet tall.
Washington also tried to grow Morus alba (white mulberry) trees in the late 18th century. He imported 100 white mulberries from Connecticut with an eye toward silk production, Gruntner said. There is one that survives outside the upper garden. “I think that really speaks to the experimental nature that George Washington envisioned,” she said.
If you walk any of these wooded tracts, it seems miraculous that some trees began their existence in the 1770s and have withstood centuries of the trials. You squint up the trunk of a tree, and beyond it is a 10-story apartment building or a freeway overpass. If these trees had sprouted in a wilderness area, they could live for many centuries.
Resources:
- Lifespans of Common Trees in Virginia, Virginia Big Trees at Virginia Tech
- Old-Growth Forest Network
- Tried and True Native Plant Selections for the Mid-Atlantic: Trees. MGNV.
[1] From [Diary entry: 12 January 1785],” Founders Online, National Archives,
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-04-02-0002-0001-0012.
[Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 4, 1 September 1784 – 30 June 1786, ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, pp. 74–75.